Sunday: A Day to Visit Family and Friends

16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:

Sunday, September 3, 1911: Went to Sunday school this morning. No one was here this afternoon. We went up to Oakes a little while. Ruth and I were on our way to church when we learned there wasn’t any.

Recent photo of the Muffly house and the road they would have walked down to visit the Oakes. The road would have been dirt in those days.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

It sounds like neighbors commonly visited with one another on Sunday afternoons. Since no one came to visit the Muffly family, they went to visit their neighbors, the Oakes.

In 1911 people did not work on Sundays. Farmers worked very hard all week—but Sunday was a day of rest. On Sundays the animals were fed and the cows milked—but all other farm work waited until Monday.

And, a hundred years ago stores were not open on Sundays.

So Sundays were a quiet, relaxing day to spend with family and friends.

Church Service Times

I still can’t figure out exactly what determined the times of church services and Sunday School. Sometimes they were held in the morning—other times in the afternoon.

I continue to think that the Baptist church in McEwensville was part of a parish and that the minister served several churches. The services probably rotated between more and less desired times. Probably church was canceled because the minister was unable to make it to McEwenville that day.

Previously I’d thought that if the church services were in the afternoon that Sunday School also was held in the afternoon—and if services were in the morning than Sunday School was in the morning.

But this entry makes it sound as if Sunday School was held in the morning even if church was in the afternoon—though maybe the last sentence in the diary entry about Grandma and her sister Ruth being on their way to church referred back to the morning.